


Altogether Your World

by Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:48:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/pseuds/Slantedlight
Summary: Will Stanton has been watching for years, and now it seems there's something to see.
Relationships: Bran Davies/Will Stanton
Comments: 11
Kudos: 69
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Altogether Your World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sultrybutdamaged](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrybutdamaged/gifts).



_21st December, 1990_

“My Will, the watchman,” Merriman had called him, and for years Will had watched in the imperfect world, growing up in it, been Old One and boy in the calm after the storm. He had done his rounds of the old places and kept an eye on the guardians who were left, and everything had been quiet. There was no sign of the Dark stirring again, because it had truly been vanquished, as Merriman promised, as Will knew in his heart of hearts.

But that didn’t mean that there was nothing dark left in the world, that the dreams of its new keepers didn’t find their way through to the daylight realms, and although it was the first to do so, Will wasn’t entirely surprised to find one of them standing on his doorstep in Somerset at midnight of the night before his birthday. It was a woman, which might have drawn Will to open the door in worry if he hadn’t felt the sharp darkness of her, and something nudgingly familiar, but she wasn’t knocking on the door, or looking for the bell, she was simply standing there. Listening, perhaps.

Will stood still too, in the now-familiar shadows of the living room, wearing nothing but his boxers and goosebumps, and listened as well, watched the woman in a way she couldn’t feel any more than other ordinary humans could feel it, and waited. She had long dark hair that hung like a waterfall down her back, rounded features that looked almost like good nature except that they were frozen still, and green eyes that he couldn’t read at all. He heard her breathing, soft and fast, the slight rustle of her puffa jacket as she shifted, and at last he heard her take a deeper breath, in and then out through her nose. Finally an envelope was pushed through his door, a harsh crunching sound in the quiet night, and then the woman turned and walked away, north and east back towards the road.

o0o

Will woke to the demanding ring of his doorbell, curled on his side and warm under the duvet, the air cold enough outside it that he could huff little clouds into life as he came slowly to, and watch them disappear into the sunshine.

Sunshine, and the doorbell was ringing. Right then, up you get.

His clock said 9.30am, which wasn’t nearly late enough when he’d finally got back to bed around three, but it would have to do. Sunlight streamed into the room where he hadn’t drawn the curtains, watching Canis Major chasing Lepus until he finally fell asleep. The sky was a pale cold blue, but it was clear and full of winter promise. 

He’d better answer the door.

It took him a minute to pull on his jeans and shirt and jumper from yesterday, but the bell continued to ring in arrogant demand, an old-fashioned jangling, and then all of a sudden he knew exactly who it was, and he relaxed. No need to hurry, unless it was because he wanted to. Thick socks, his boots because they were warm, pause in the bathroom to splash away the last of his sleep with icy water, and then he could thump safely downstairs, and back through the living room, still and peaceful now. 

Most people knew to come around the back, and anyone else Will might have gone outside and around to greet, but he went through the ritual of lifting the bar of wood away from its solid iron rests and leaning it against the wall, and then prising the latch from its worn clutch, and finally leaning heavily backwards so that the huge oak door swung slowly open, letting in light and setting dust motes spinning in lazy orbits across the shallow hallway.

“And about time,” Bran said, all silvered light and dark glasses. “I thought you were going to sleep all day and leave me standing here.” He tipped the glasses down on his nose, peering into the shadows at Will, and gave a sudden grin. “Alright, _saes_?”

Will’s heart was lightening as it always had when he saw this boy, even when he was twelve years old. “Oh, it’s you. Should have known with all that noise.”

“Noise, is it? And me ringing politely on your doorstep in the shivering cold, for hours and…”

“Get in here, would you!” Will said, smiling because he had to. “You’re letting all the chill air out.”

Bran grinned back again, stepped across the threshold and then tipped his head quickly down, brushing a kiss, light as dust, across Will’s lips, before retreating again and gesturing widely around him. “Nice place you’ve got here, Old One, all oak and iron. It suits you.”

“And rust and leaky roof. You’re lucky it’s not raining, we’d be up and downstairs with buckets before you knew it.” He pushed the door shut and slid the bolt back again, with an effort. “I’m minding it for Tam – he slipped on the stairs a couple of weeks ago and broke his hip. They’re keeping him in because he’s such an awful patient it won’t mend, and then he’s off to his sister’s for Christmas.”

“That’s your master stone-carver, isn’t it?” Bran looked interested. “We should go and visit, take him some grapes…”

“… interrogate him about the ancient wisdom and folklore of working with stone?”

Bran raised an eyebrow at him. “And this from the man who’s been leeching every bit of the craft he can manage out of the poor bloke. Pot calling the kettle, that is.”

“His work is amazing,” Will said, grabbed as ever by honesty. “And he’d be happy to talk to you actually – in fact he’d love it. Abbey Crunch rather than grapes though, his sweet tooth is worse than yours. Speaking of kettles – tea or coffee?”

“Have you got the kind that percs in the kitchen, or do you make all the noises yourself?”

“Nothing but Nescafe’s best for you…”

“Tea it is, then,” Bran said easily, following him down the short hallway to the living room, and dropping his rucksack onto the floor. He looked around. “This is alright, isn’t it. Better than your last place.”

Will followed his gaze around the uneven white plaster walls and across the dark beams of the ceiling, then back down to the chocolate brown corduroy sofas, scattered with various plump, flowered cushions, the rugs spread across the slate stone floors, colourful if worn, and finally the inglenook fireplace along one wall, not lit yet, and not even cleaned from yesterday and ready, but full of the promise of warmth. Definitely better than the artists squat in Islington, which was where Bran had seen him last, despite the leaking roof. 

“It’s the old village smithy, been in Tam’s family forever. Take a seat,” he said, gesturing to the sofas. “If you’re lucky I might even find some toast somewhere.” He retreated into the kitchen, ran a quick tongue over his lips, and let himself smile. He pottered around the kitchen, savouring it all despite the niggling worry of his midnight visitor. Bran was here, and it wasn’t as if he didn’t see him now and then, didn’t still visit with Aunt Jen, or venture over to Abergavenny if it was still Bran’s term time, but it felt strangely as if something long dormant in his life was finally waking up again, a heart of excitement fluttering deep within him as it hadn’t for a long time now, like childhood Christmas come again. 

Tea and toast were managed quickly enough, and settled on a tray with thick slices of extra bread and a jar of Tam’s bramble jam in case they wanted more, but even so Bran had got the fire going by the time he took it all back into the living room, and was standing beside the table by the window, looking down.

“Yours makes no more sense than mine does,” he said thoughtfully, picking up the small ring of entwined twigs and leaves, barely big enough to fit around a wrist, and turning it over in his hands. “Dogwood for protection, oak for strength, caraway for holding. And then hemlock, the opposite of all of them.”

“And small for a Christmas wreath,” Will agreed. “You got one too, then?” He settled the tray on the coffee table between the sofas, came and stood beside Bran in the cold light from the window. “I wondered.”

In answer Bran picked up his backpack and reached into one of the outside pockets. From a white envelope he pulled a circlet of dried twigs and leaves, and set it down on the table beside Will’s. “Through the postbox at Da’s, two nights ago. Not a sound from the dogs, but all of a sudden the flap snapped shut and this fell to the floor. I was getting ready for bed, nearly gave me a heart attack, it did – and there was no one there when I looked out.”

Will eyed the two rings, overlapping now on the table, reached out to lay a finger on Bran’s, almost identical to his own. He let the world fall away, looking back through the ages and the worlds and the ancient spinning suns in their cold and pin-pricked black skies, reached out to the Old Ones, to everything they knew together… 

Nothing. There was nothing. Like the girl last night, the rings were a dark, unknown space in the world, and absolutely nothing else.

He caught Bran’s eye, breathing out a kind of sigh, and shook his head. “The toast’s getting cold,” he said, and turned purposefully away towards the fire. He settled down on the sofa, tried to pretend to himself that he hadn’t chosen that spot so that he could keep half an eye on the things. “And that’s just it,” he went on, as Bran sat down beside him, “I can’t feel anything in them, yours or mine. There’s no light or dark, but they aren’t the high magic or wild, they’re just…”

“Nothing,” Bran said. “But someone keen decided that we should both have one, delivered at midnight and hundreds of miles apart.” 

“A joke,” Will suggested. Some joke. He bit into a piece of toast, and tried not to watch Bran licking melted butter from his fingers. "Or they’re something else entirely. And there's nothing your clever-clever university books tell you about this sort of thing?"

"Not clever-clever enough," Bran said easily. "Or maybe they’re not old enough, or not the right books at all. I didn’t have much time to look, I came almost straight over. You sure it's not one of your whacky lot from London playing a trick on his bohemian artist friend, and an innocent young Welshman?"

Will snorted rudely. "Innocent as the pure driven slush. I'd like to see-" He broke off. "What? What is it?" 

Bran was sitting up straight suddenly, listening intently, and Will's breath caught. He had taken his glasses off in the dimmer light of the house, and for just a moment he looked again like the huntsman they had both seen all those years ago, tawny eyes bound on only one thing.

And then he smiled, and then he laughed, and as Will looked on in confusion, he jumped to his feet, pulled open the kitchen door, and strode confidently through. Will got up and followed him, coming slowly aware of a car door slamming, realising that perhaps he'd heard its engine approaching after all, had paid it no attention, as a commonplace thing.

By the time he got there, the outside door was standing wide open, and Bran was framed against the winter morning, arms wrapped around a tall blonde woman in jeans and a bright red duffle coat, who was hugging him back. Eventually she pulled away, beaming up at him, and then turned to Will with the same quiet but happy smile. 

"Hello, Will Stanton," she said.

Will smiled back. "Hello Jane."

"It was a summoning, then," Bran said. "A summoning of three for the birthday of an Old One, and maybe something more than that, because that was where it all started."

"Back together again," Jane said. "It's been _years_ since I saw you both at the same time. What do you mean - a summoning?"

Bran took her hand and began leading her inside, past Will. "Come on Jenny-oh, let's get you some of Will's disgusting coffee. You haven't by any chance had a strange present through your door recently have you?"

Will looked after them for a moment, and then back out to the winter-cold morning. The night's frost had mostly melted away by now, and there were clouds on the horizon to the west. He reached out to close the door, to go and join the others by the fire. Behind him there was a skittering of dry leaves along the paving stones. The wind was beginning to rise.

o0o

“I was passing,” Jane said, as they sat together around Tam’s huge old teapot. “Well, as passing as I could be, and I thought I’d call in on the off-chance.” She smiled at Bran. “I was going to phone you later, as well, when I got home.”

“Home for Christmas, is it?” Bran asked, stirring sugar into his mug. “What about Simon and Barney?”

“No, the other direction. Mum and Dad have gone on a cruise this year, Simon’s on call, and Barney’s still in Goa, so there’s no Christmas at home. I had a meeting in London, then I stayed over with a friend. What’s all this about a summoning?”

“And a present,” Will said. He got up and went to stand beside the table, staring down at the two rings. Only two, because Jane hadn’t had one, so perhaps it wasn’t connected to the Six at all. And he hadn’t, after all, felt it on the girl, although there’d been _something_.

Jane scraped back her chair and followed him, looking down at the tangles of twigs and leaves curiously. They looked strangely natural against Tam’s cream and holly-patterned tablecloth. She reached out to pick one up, paused to glance at Will, and he shrugged.

“They won’t hurt you.”

“What are they, then?” She lifted one in each hand, studied them. “Are they both the same?”

“Charms of some sort, Bran says.”

“They don’t make sense though.” Bran joined them, standing close on Will’s other side, so that their arms brushed. “If they were real charms, ancient charms, then the hemlock would be countered by the other plants – they just wouldn’t be together.”

“They did their job though,” Will said. Jane looked quizzically at him, and he gave a half-smile. “Well we’re all here, aren’t we?”

“Not me though – I didn’t get one. I just happened to stop by.”

“Did you?” Bran asked. “Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? That you happened to stop by today of all days?”

“Well of course I knew it was Will’s birthday…” She trailed off, and looked around anxiously, dropped the circlets back on the table and brushed her hands against her jeans. “You think it’s connected with Will’s birthday? Like the other time, the first time?”

He’d told them about that eventually, about the birds and the animals shrinking from him, and the snow falling into his bedroom in the middle of the night. But he shook his head. “It doesn’t feel like that,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like _anything_.” He prodded the circlets on the table himself. “And I’ve no idea what someone would use these for.”

“Dogwood and oak and caraway and hemlock,” Bran said thoughtfully. “I know someone who could tell us, then.”

“Couldn’t we just burn them?” Jane asked, slightly plaintively. “I thought you could show me what you’re working on now, and we could go for a walk, and I’d treat you to lunch somewhere. I’m not sure I want…” She gestured at the table. “…all this again. Not now. There’s too many other things going on in life.”

“It’s always with us, Jenny,” Bran said quietly. “Just because you can’t see always it, cariad, doesn’t mean it’s not always there.” 

“I know,” she replied. “And I know I sound like I’m ten years old, but…”

“I can’t feeling anything bad about them,” Will said again. “I promise.”

“Then we could burn them.”

“But if there _was_ something we don’t know about, something not _bad_ , but…” Bran paused. “… _something_ , then we might set it off by accident. Like throwing a firework in the bonfire - it would burn, but who knows which way it would shoot before it did?”

“Is this one of your professors, then?” Will asked. Colleagues, he meant really, but it was still strange to think that Bran was that grown-up thing, technically a professor himself - _Dr_ Bran Davies, with his own office and students, and research that was published in international journals. “There’s a phone.” He nodded back towards the sofas, but Bran was shaking his head.

“Not from the university, and not on the phone, either – well, probably she is, but she never gave me her number. She lives by St Just.” He caught Will’s eye, held it.

“But…” Jane’s eyes opened wide. “That’s Cornwall, that’s _miles_ away! That’s further than Penzance – it’s at least four hours in the car!”

“There are other Ways,” Bran said, tilting his head in silent question to Will. “One goes almost to her door.”

Will nodded back, just a small movement, “We’d have to wait until tonight for the path.”

“Still, it would be quicker.” Bran sounded like he was waiting for an argument, and perhaps Will would have argued - _Do we really need to?_ \- but he thought that tonight, perhaps, they did need to. This wasn’t like the last time, all those years ago, when things just seemed to _happen_ , to fall into the right place, helped along by Merriman and the pattern of the Light and the prophecies – whatever this was it had no pattern, and he had no Merriman either. It was just them this time, not the Six.

“There’ll be a moon tonight, to shine our way,” he said. “It will be easier – we should wait until then.”

“She probably won’t be home until then anyway. Busy woman, is Endelyn.”

“What are you talking about?” Jane asked. “Why does the moon matter?”

“There are paths,” Will said, “that we can travel on to visit certain places, and people.”

“Like Endelyn,” Bran interrupted. “People, there are, who still know the old ways.”

“Is it dangerous? I mean…” 

“Not if we’re together,” Will said, confident, but at the same time Bran said “Not really”, so that Jane lifted her eyebrows at them.

“Not _really_ dangerous, how? What _ways_? You’re talking in riddles!”

“The Old Ways criss-cross the whole country,” Will said. “Paths and lines that have been in the same place and used for so long that they’ve… they’ve carved their way through time as well as space. If you know them, and know how to use them, and if the timing of it is right, you can use them as a kind of short cut.”

“And how is that dangerous?” Jane narrowed her eyes at him, daring him to offer her comfort instead of truth.

“You can get lost on them,” Will said, reluctantly. “Like slipping on ice at a corner and finding yourself sliding in the wrong direction. But as long as we know where we’re going, and there are three of us to know, then it’s like...”

“Having snowchains on your tyres,” Bran said, as Will paused, trying to find the right words. “We just take it carefully until we get there, but we’ll get there.”

“And the moon lights the path,” Jane said slowly, “so that we can see it more clearly too. Alright then… So what do we do until tonight?”

Will caught Bran’s eye again, and they both grinned at her. “I thought I could show you my work,” he said. “And then perhaps a walk, and then – you can buy me lunch.”

“Birthday boy and all that,” Bran said, solemnly. “We’ll need to find a cake, and presents – it’s a busy day.”

Jane looked from one to the other of them, and then she was smiling too, and reaching out to punch them both on an arm, and Will was taking her by the hand and pulling her after him, through the kitchen and to his workshop.

o0o

Jane and Bran had both seen his smaller work before, the silversmithing in his father’s workshop, and then his steel and bronze work, but never anything like the gate and gateposts he was making here with Tam, stone and iron flowing together and around each other so that the one seemed almost tangled in the other. They made impressed noises, and asked the right questions about scaling things up so far, and how the curves belonged to each other, and then he and Jane set off for a brisk winter’s walk through the woods and down to the stream, the ground hard under their feet, and frost still limning the grass in the dells and shadows. They talked of everything and nothing – Jane’s work at the women’s shelter, Will’s latest nieces and nephews, Simon and Barney, and holidays and houses, while all around them the trees reached bare and beautiful to the sky. Bran stayed behind with the promise of making Will a birthday cake, which they both scoffed at amiably, prepared to be dutifully amazed and appreciative at whatever he’d managed to cobble together by the time they got back.

But “That’s amazing!” Jane said, when they collapsed, chilled and still smelling of cold air, by the fire, when Bran brought it in on a tray. Bran’s cake was a proper cake – the sides straight, shining chocolate icing not only on the top but all down the sides, and patterns piped all around in what was somehow an even darker chocolate. A chain of circles, Will saw, each one quartered by a cross, and slightly different, as if they were alive. In the very centre was a tree, come alive with glistening white blossoms. Mostly, he was amazed that Tam had icing sugar in his stocks.

“Da was never one for cooking, and someone had to do it,” Bran said, as breezily as if he’d barely noticed the way they were looking at him. “You should try my bara brith.”

“Quite the Renaissance man,” Will said, because it was too easy to simply love him for everything he was. “Plays the harp, bakes the perfect cake, and decorates it as if he was an artist. I expect we’ll see you on stage next, or reeling off poetry.”

Bran struck a pose, lifting a foot onto the sofa, one hand on his hip, and the other flourished in the air, then held Will’s gaze and declaimed.

“ _Mi gerddaf gyda thi drwy weddill f'oes,  
Pan fydd yr haul ar fryn neu'r dyddiau'n groes;  
A phan ddaw'r alwad draw, pwy wyr pa awr,  
Mi gerddaf gyda thi i’r freuddwyd fawr. _”*

He should have looked ridiculous, and he’d started with a mocking twist on his lips that suggested he’d meant to, but the light from the fire caught him so that his hair shone white-gold, and his eyes flashed with age and history, and for that minute he was the Pendragon again. There was a pause when he’d finished, until he tossed his head in dismissal and plonked himself back down on the couch beside Jane . 

“Well I never,” Will said at last. “And do you speak Welsh?”

And they were off then – Bran launching himself across the table to Jane’s surprised shout, tussling and giggling until they were breathless, and Jane had to shout again when they nearly had the cake over.

They set off into the village for a late lunch at the _Sun Inn_ , strolling back replete and lazy to the fireside again, to eat cake and sup slowly at glasses of Tam’s dark homebrew. The sky faded from pale blue to peach to apricot and then it was late-afternoon winter dark. 

“We’ll see moonrise from the kitchen,” Will said, standing up, suddenly older, and serious. “And then we can go.”

They followed him through, to where the kitchen’s wide-paned windows sat solid and stone-rimmed in the adjacent wall, the sink and kitchen counter a mundanity that they leaned against, watching.

“There,” Jane said at last, and there it was. A pale glow was spreading through the woods behind the house, and then across the treetops, and then a bright crescent of light appeared, thickened, became a half-moon resting on its stomach, growing more and more pregnant until it was the full glowing silver disc.

Will gestured, and they followed him to pull on coats and scarves and gloves, and then out into the night. He led them to the edge of the woods, where the path from the village began to meander its way among the trees, and took a deep breath, listening carefully. There was music there – not the rippling, bell-like music of the Light, but something older and deeper, discordant bells and throated chanting, at odds with the silver light that was deepening to a pale gold, that was glowing in front of them now in a narrow trail. This was a lych way, a corpse road, a path for the dead.

Jane retreated a step, and Will reached back to her, gave her a reassuring smile. He took her hand and saw Bran take her other, and then he led them onto the path. It was a real path, the ground under them soft with the mulch of autumn leaves, the smell of the woods rising around them, branches and twigs pulling at their clothing, and yet it was also not. The trees caught at them, but propelled them forward at the same time, past other trails that diverged, where they glimpsed movement and shadows, and once a silhouetted line of top-hatted mourners, where bells tolled more loudly for a moment, before fading and urging them on again.

At last they came to a firmer road, and then a stone wall with an ordinary garden gate, and then they were standing in front of a door, painted moss green, from which hung a large wreath of holly and ivy, interwoven against a darker background of thick Scots pine. There was a bell to one side of the door, a perfectly ordinary ceramic doorbell, and after looking sideways to both Will and to Jane, Bran reached out and pushed it. They could hear it chiming deep within the house, and after a moment a light flicked on in the hallway, so that a rectangle of glass above the door glowed electric yellow. There was a shuffling behind the door, and Will felt Jane grip his hand more tightly, glanced at her to see her face tense and slightly frowning, so that he squeezed her hand back and was rewarded with the flash of a nervous smile. A key turned in a lock, and then a bolt slid back, and then the door was opening.

Bran had described her, who she was and where she lived, so that they could add their direction to his along the lych way, but whatever Will had really imagined, he didn’t think it was this woman. She stood in front of them, middling tall with a severe face, surrounded by dark hair that was slightly frizzed with grey. She was younger than he’d expected, perhaps middle-aged, and she was wearing a pale green dressing gown, and worn burgundy slippers. She looked at them, from one to the other – Jane first, and then Will, and then Bran, and finally smiled in greeting, her face lightening.

“Bran Davies,” she said, and Will could hear the Cornish in her voice. “It’s been a long time since I saw you last. Did they like the paper?”

Bran smiled back, and nodded. “Hello Della, _sut wyt ti?_ They accepted it, alright. I’ll send you a copy if they ever get around to actually publishing it.”

“I’m fine – and these things take time,” the woman said. “As did you, I see.” She glanced across them all. “It’s been a long time since I saw someone new travelling the lych roads.” She stopped at Will, gazing hard. “And I’ve not seen your kind for many years now,” she said to Will, looking him up and down. “I heard you’d left these shores.”

“My masters retired when their work was done,” Will said, agreeing as far as he was able. “But every world needs a watcher.”

“And who watches the watchers, I wonder?” she asked, and then laughed out loud when Will drew himself up, not sure that the insult was meant, not sure that it was totally innocent either. “Be at peace, Watcher. Your signs have long gone, and will not be needed again.”

“But there are other signs,” Bran said. “Signs that you can read.”

“About all manner of things,” she agreed. “And you, boy – do you still seek that which is yours no longer?” She peered up into Bran’s face, as if she was a snake trying to hypnotise him, and then she pulled back again, and sniffed. “Yes… you will do what you must,” she said. “And be always wary, be wary and ware. Show me your signs.”

Will took the two circlets from his jacket pocket, laid them overlapping across the palm of his hand, and held them out to her.

She looked down at them, looked up at him again, eyes dark and hooded, and then stood back, opening the door wide. “It’s cold out there, you’d better come in,” she said.

Della sat them down at a round kitchen table, the wood old and deeply scourged, but clean and polished, and bustled about making tea, before she even looked at the circlets again. Once she’d settled herself down, and added sugar to her own mug, she nodded back down to them. “And why did you bring me these, Doctor Bran Davies? And with an Old One, and with a fair maid?” 

Will saw Jane blink, but he watched Bran, surprised to see him answering carefully, in a more measured way than he thought he’d ever heard him use before.

“They both appeared on doorsteps at midnight,” he said. “Mine and Will’s. And although I’m no expert, even I can see that they are not working charms for magic, neither high nor wild.” He looked down at the circlets, and then up, seriously, to meet Della’s gaze. “I thought perhaps it might take a working witch to say what they are.”

To Will’s surprise, Della’s mouth stretched in a smile, was caught in again, as if she was trying to control it, and then she burst into laughter.

“Not a working witch, Dr Davies, no.” She took a mouthful of tea, looked around them all with amusement in her eyes, and calmed suddenly. “But perhaps a witch of some kind, and there are more than what they call the black and the white. This-” She tapped at the circlets, “This is nothing, this is someone playing. A pink witch, if you like.”

“A pink witch?” Bran raised an eyebrow.

“Someone who’s got their ideas from a how-to book,” Della said. “Probably young, maybe lonely. They’ve been to Glastonbury, or just been wandering around the bookshops, and they’ve probably bought themselves a cauldron and a wand and half a dozen crystals.”

“So none of it means anything? Then why…?”

Della shook her head. “I didn’t say it meant nothing, I said it was someone playing. The rest of it just binds to make a pretty circle, but the hemlock now – that one’s been chosen. It’s too dry to be any real danger, but it’s been chosen. So perhaps _playing_ was not the right word, either. Look to your enemies, Bran Davies.”

“I don’t have enemies! Maybe the odd critic who doesn’t agree with me…”

“Besides,” Jane interrupted. “It was Will too. It must be someone you both know. And…” She hesitated. “It’s an ordinary thing, a human thing.”

“Perhaps as dangerous as the other,” Della said. “Be careful.”

“How can we find out?” Will shook his head. “You’re right it was a woman, and I’ve seen what she looks like, but…”

“You saw her?” Jane said, startled. “When?”

“When she dropped it off to me. It’s certainly a woman – and an ordinary woman then.”

“You can’t both have jilted her at the altar, either,” Della said, mouth amused again. “Not you two. But…” She looked thoughtfully at Jane. “Since it’s you, there may be a way to find out after all.”

“Me-Bran, or me-Will?” Bran asked, and Della shot him a less amused look this time.

“That’s the trouble with men,” she said to Jane. “Especially the ones that have a care for the world.” She looked from Will to Bran, and then stood up abruptly. “The power is the three, and neither of you should be forgetting that.” She led them to her door again. “Take your friends home for Christmas, Will Stanton, for an old Christmas, the way it once was. I think you’ll find your answers there. And in the meantime…” She waited until they’d all been ushered out, were standing in front of the door, looking back at her expectantly. “Watch out for the malice of your own kind.”

And with that, she closed the door.

“Well that was less helpful than I’d hoped,” Bran said, sounding disgruntled, tucking his hands in his pocket and leading the way back to the cottage gate. “Although at least we know it’s not any of your lot, Old One.”

“No, it’s your lot, Pendragon,” Will retorted, harshly enough to make Jane pause and look between the two of them. Will blinked apologetically at her. “Sorry Jane, I just…” He trailed off, looked away into the night.

“And me.” Bran came back, waggled an elbow at Jane until she tucked her own arm through it. “I suppose I thought she’d tell us that it was some special design that was only made by a particular bloke who lived in a house far from anyone else. Easy to find, like.”

“Well, she did give us some advice,” Will said, thoughtfully. “Maybe we should take it. How do you fancy coming back to Huntercombe for Christmas?”

o0o

They took Jane’s car this time, trundling along the A303 and then the M3, Christmas songs playing on the radio, pretending just for a short while that there was nothing they needed to worry about except the roaring lorries that pulled out to pass them on the roads, and whether they needed to stop at the next services.

Jane had worried about being landed on Will’s mum with no warning, but Will was sanguine. “Mum will be delighted – Max and James and Barbara are all at their in-laws this year, and Stephen’s still out by Australia somewhere. She keeps saying the place feels deserted. Never mind that me and Paul and Robin and Gwen and Mary, will be there, _and_ Gwen and Mary’s rabble.”

“Still – will there be room for two more?” Jane asked doubtfully, shifting gears as they approached a roundabout. Two extra families on top of you and Paul are a lot of rabble.”

Will grinned at her. “More than enough – Paul and Robin will share anyway, and Gwen and Mary squeeze everyone into their old rooms. That’s two rooms free to start with.”

“And I’ll share with him anyway,” Bran added casually from the backseat, nodding generally in Will’s direction. Jane looked pleased – despite always seeming to be on her own, she was the romantic type – and Will could feel himself going pink.

“Alright then. Well, it’s very kind of her anyway.”

The first two days at the Stanton’s were a whirlwind of catching up with everyone, introductions to new infants, and last-minute present-buying, full of do-you-remembers and hasn’t-it-changed, and almost as often it-hasn’t-changed, and then suddenly it was Christmas eve.

The tree had been brought down from Dawson’s Farm, although it was no longer George who selected it for them, but Farmer Dawson’s son, Henry, long since returned from agricultural college, and working happily on _modernising_ , as he called it. They still had a yule log too, which would be lit later that evening when they came back from carolling.

Mr Stanton was determined to raise a second generation of carollers, and Gwen and Mary took their partners as well as the seven children they had between them, so all in all the Stanton ranks had swollen even before Jane and Bran were added. The moon was waning now, but it shed enough light to sparkle off the ice-touched stone of Dawson’s Farm and the village houses, a romantic addition to the sodium-orange of the streetlights, and the blue glow of the new Co-op. The villagers they sang to were all new since Will had left, though one or two were old school friends who had either never gone far, or returned home after brief adventures outside Huntercombe, and it wasn’t until they came at last to the Manor that he felt the evening was suddenly _the way it once was_ , even though he knew it wasn’t going to be Merriman opening the door, or Miss Greythorne calling them in and asking about their parents. The new owners were tradition-minded, however, and Mr Rush made a generous donation into their box, and invited them jovially inside for mince pies and mulled wine when they’d sung three carols on the doorstep. The Stanton grandchildren immediately disappeared with the Rush children, who they knew from school, mince pies in hand and exhortations from their parents not to get sticky fingers on anything, then Gwen and Mary settled in with their partners, and Paul and Robin to talk to Mr and Mrs Rush about village politics and goings-on.

“And how this is supposed to help, I don’t know,” Bran said in a low voice, sipping his mulled wine and looking around the panelled entrance hall. “What do we _do_ here?”

Will shrugged, momentarily at a loss without Merriman to whisk them away on pretext of his butler duties. “I think… I think we just have to wait and see,” he said. “And stick together. The power of three.”

“That’s all very well,” Jane muttered, “But what I really need is the loo, and you’re not tagging along to that. Do you think they’d mind if…”

“Will! Will!” Gwen was gesturing to him from across the hall. “Find out where the kids have got to, would you, and round them up for me?” 

He rolled his eyes for form, but he gave Gwen a quick thumbs up, and then he grinned. “What did I tell you?” he asked. “Come on.”

He glanced around, found the side-door that Merriman had once led him through, and followed his memories, beckoning the others. There was no longer a passageway, however, musty-smelling or otherwise. The Rushes had redecorated, as had the many owners of the Manor before them, and they stepped straight into a long, elegant room, damask-papered in dusky pink, the floorboards covered over with thick, comforting carpet, and a large television in one corner. The fireplace was still there, however, with its wide hearth and broad mantel, cream-painted now. The square panels and Tudor roses above hadn’t been touched, at least, and not really knowing what he was doing, Will lifted a hand, and ran it across them, feeling them warm and somehow still alive, but otherwise perfectly ordinary. He closed his eyes, let his mind wander, and then he remembered the rose that had been part-buried in the plaster at the edge. He opened his eyes, turned to right, and there it still was. He _knew_ this, he knew the way to bring back times past, all he had to do was…

“Look, I’m dying for the bathroom,” Jane was saying to Bran. “I’m going to have to nip upstairs and find it. Stay here until I get back?”

“Nowhere to go, Jenny-oh,” Bran replied lightly. “I’m not sure what Will thinks he’ll find, but…” He shrugged in his turn. “I don’t see how it can be here.”

Jane took a last reassuring look at him, then went back out through the door and across the hall, searching helplessly. Mary caught her, interpreted the look, and tipped her head towards the staircase, gesturing to the left. Jane smiled back gratefully, and set off up the stairs, one hand on the polished bannister. The noise from below faded – even from the children, who, Jane realised, had found their own way back and were playing some raucous game in a corner while their elders continued to chat over mulled wine. It was something of a relief. She lived on her own, and although her days were filled with people and questions and telephone calls and meetings, she enjoyed going home to the solitude of her little flat, and pottering around quietly in the kitchen and then reading or listening to music in the evenings. Will and Bran were fine, but the crowded Stanton household, at once wonderful and bewildering, had been beginning to press on her.

She turned to the left at the top of the stairs, as Mary had indicated, caught sight of a towel rail through a gap in the second door along, slipped through it and turned to lean in relief against the door, closing her eyes in the peace. She’d felt her period starting as they wandered around the houses of the village, a bare grumble yet, but she didn’t want to mess around rinsing knickers when she was staying in someone else’s house. She reached into her shoulder bag to the small purse she kept there, and opened her eyes again.

The bathroom was not there. Instead she stood at the door to a bedchamber, where a huge four-poster bed, complete with tester and curtains, stood against the wall beside the window, and in the bed, propped up against pillows, was an old lady, wearing a delicate robe, pale-coloured in the winter’s light from the window.

 _But it was night-time_ , Jane thought in confusion, and then she recognised the Lady, her fine-boned, somewhat arrogant face, but mostly, most preciously, her clear blue eyes.

“Madam,” Jane said, and as she had done once before, long ago, she dipped her head, let one foot slide behind her, and bobbed a curtsey that she had never been taught to make.

“It has been many years, my child,” the Lady said, smiling gently at her. “And now you have returned behind yourself, to seek justice.”

 _Have I?_ Jane thought, and though she said nothing, she knew her face looked as uncertain as she felt. “Are you alright, my lady?” she asked instead, because surely it was too early for someone to be in bed unless they were ill.

“I am well, Jane Drew,” the lady said, her eyes glinting affectionately. “But we must not linger, because these paths in time are harder to keep open for just one Old One, who can draw only on his own life-force to do so.”

“Will!” Jane exclaimed in alarm, but the lady smiled still, and shook her head. 

“Will is safe in himself, for we all know our own limits, and will not pass them except in times of dire need. And now is not that time.”

“But he needs my help,” Jane suggested, and was not surprised to see the lady nod. 

“There are some things that you see more clearly, Jane-Jana-Juno-Jane, some things that you will know long before those noble men who would protect us. And when you do – remember who you are, and remember that you are in the world of humans, and that it is that world which can protect you now.”

“I don’t understand…” Jane began, but the room was fading around her, and the lady with it, and then it was just a simple bathroom again, and she took a breath and looked around, half-sure she’d imagined it, and then locked the door and went about her business.

o0o

Will and Bran had returned to the entrance hall by the time Jane came back downstairs, talking quietly between themselves on the edge of the crowd of adults, who were starting to dust icing sugar from their fingers, and tip up the last of their mulled wine.

“There you are, Jenny!” Bran looked up as she joined them. “We were beginning to think you’d fallen in.” 

She gave her head a little shake, and edged them slightly further away from the others. “It happened,” she said. “The Lady appeared, like she did by the lake, but she was in bed, and…”

“The Lady… was she alright?” Will interrupted, and Jane heard the yearning that he tried to cover in his words. He had loved the Lady, Jane knew suddenly, perhaps as they all did, and she had not appeared to him.

She nodded. “Yes – yes, she…” She paused, and took a breath. “She said that you sent me to her, and that I can help, and…”

“Right, Will – are you three ready to brave the cold again?” Robin’s deep voice interrupted them. “Time to go.”

“Time for Father Christmas!” one of the younger ones shouted in excitement, and everyone laughed. 

“Time for Christmas magic,” Will said in a low voice, close to Jane’s ear, as they found themselves in the middle of the family crowd being seen to the door, amidst calls of best wishes, and looking forward to next year, and she knew that he understood.

They followed the path back to the Stanton’s own rambling house, the little ones chasing excitedly ahead, followed only a little more staidly by the wine-warmed grown-ups. Their torches bobbed up and down to light their way, but the moon shone brightly over them, surrounded by the sparks of light that were the brighter stars. Jane and Will and Bran brought up the rear, each busy in their own thoughts, following the others as they tumbled inside to the warmth, hanging up coats and hats and gloves in the hallway, and then dispersing upstairs, for the children and their beleaguered mothers, and into the living room for the rest. 

There was a stranger there with Will’s parents, a woman with long dark hair who was pouring rich dark liquid from a bottle into delicate glasses on a tray, which caught the firelight as if they were the essence of Christmas.

“I don’t think you’ve met Beca yet, have you, Will?” Mr Stanton was saying. “She’s been helping your mother keep this place under control, odd jobs and cleaning - just popped in to wish us all a merry Christmas.”

“You’ll have a sloe gin?” Beca asked with a smile, looking directly at Will. “My mother makes it every year, and she sent far too many bottles for me to use, this year. Her own recipe.”

“That’s kind,” Paul said, taking a glass as Beca offered the tray to him. “Dad used to make sloe gin, but not for years.”

“Was always gone in five seconds,” Mr Stanton said with a smile, reaching to take his own glass as Beca paused in front of him. “Not worth the effort in the end, and there was never anywhere to hide it that one of you wouldn’t find.”

Jane was aware of Will’s gasp, and Bran stiffening beside her. Beca looked suddenly startled as she reached the tray towards Will and met Bran’s eyes instead, and then the world was kaleidoscoping in until she could see nothing but the girl and the bottle, and the glasses on the tray, and Mr Stanton lifting his own glass towards his lips.

“Oh _dear_ she said suddenly, and very loudly, and then she was falling forwards, arms outstretched so that the bottle flew from Beca’s hand, the tray tilted upwards, and both Paul and Mr Stanton dropped their glasses as they tried to catch her. She closed her mouth against the splashes of liquid, tried to turn her face downwards, and hoped against all hope that no one had managed to drink yet.

“Jane!” Will shouted, and she opened her eyes, feeling herself supported from behind, to see Will crouching beside her. She looked frantically behind him, but Beca was still there, face pinched, Bran’s hand holding her arm tightly.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, pushing herself up. “I don’t know what happened, I just suddenly felt faint, and…”

“That was the most spectacular faint I’ve ever seen,” Robin said. “Are you alright?”

“Jane?” Will asked again, and she pushed herself up a bit, let herself be helped to her feet.

“I’m so sorry,” she repeated, I’ve spoiled all your drinks…”

“Oh, not to worry about that,” Mrs Stanton said, pushing the hovering men to one side with a majestic sweep of her arm. “Sit yourself down here and take some deep breaths. Put your head between your legs…”

“I think it was just the heat,” Jane said, looking frantically from Will to Beca to Bran, but she needn’t have worried, because Bran hadn’t loosened his hold on the girl, and she seemed to have sagged in his grip. “All of a sudden, after being outside. Perhaps just a glass of water…”

Paul appeared with water for her, and there was a clinking of broken glass being swept up, the sudden sound of a vacuum cleaner, and the organised chaos of cleaning up.

“Well thank goodness you had this room carpeted,” Mary was saying. “At least it was only the two wine glasses that broke.”

“Thank goodness for _burgundy-coloured_ carpet,” Mr Stanton replied, winking at Jane’s stricken look. “No major harm done.”

The chaos turned to the kind of joyful bustle that Jane had learned to recognise in the Stanton house, as people one by one remembered what they’d been doing before the excitement, and Mr and Mrs Stanton went out to find more glasses, and a bottle of nice French wine for them all instead.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Bran said to Beca, when the four of them were an island once more. He glanced at Will and Jane. “I don’t think you ever met Beca Pritchard, did you? She was away that summer, when her father…”

“When you killed my father!” Beca spat, though she kept her voice low. “You had him committed, and they never let him out, and he _died_ there, my daddy did, and, you, you never…” She seemed to run out of steam, ending in a whimper. “I was daddy’s special girl, his special girl, his...”

Jane stared at her, in growing horror that had nothing to do with what had just happened.

“You delivered those charms,” Will said, voice sure, oblivious to anything else. “I recognise you too. What was in the bottle?”

“Just a guess,” Bran said, when Beca remained silent and hard eyed, “But I’d say hemlock – is that right?”

“Why should you still have your family when mine is dead?” Beca asked, voice flat. “All that family you’ve got, and you left me with none. And you didn’t even have the decency to take a drink yourselves – Will _Stanton_ , Bran _Davies_ , you think you’re so special! And Jane _Drew_. All of you! If you’d drunk then the spell would have worked… the spell would have worked…”

“I’ll say.” Bran sounded shocked. “Hemlock is deadly poisonous… You were going to kill everyone here…”

“But… you didn’t send me any spell,” Jane said, confused. 

“Just you,” Beca said dully. “They wouldn’t have died, they didn’t have the spell… They would have watched you die, like I had to watch my ma die and my da go away and my da die…” She glared at Jane. “I took you one too! Why didn’t you get it?”

“You were at that meeting,” Will reminded her. “It’s probably waiting for you at home.”

“Hemlock is _deadly_ to drink!” Bran said again. “Of course they would all have died!”

“That’s not where it was. I told you, it was in the spell…”

“Not in the bottle,” Jane said slowly. “You didn’t put hemlock in the bottle.”

Beca looked at them scathingly. “Of course not, they would have found that – the police would have found that, and then… then…” She sniffed, gulped back what looked suddenly like tears. “I should have had some. I planned it all wrong, I should have had some…”

“Everything alright, Beca?” Mr Stanton appeared in front of them suddenly, looking around with a worried expression on his kindly face. “Do thank your mother for us…”

“She died too,” Beca said. “She died too.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry…”

“Beca is an old friend of mine, Mr Stanton,” Bran said hurriedly. “We grew up in the same valley. Funny, it is - do you know her through David and Jen Evans?”

“Yes….”

“Dad – why doesn’t Beca stay with us tonight?” Will suggested.

“She can share my room,” Jane said quickly. “I love having a roommate.”

Will looked intently at his father for a moment. 

“Yes, yes, what a good idea,” Mr Stanton agreed vaguely. “Perhaps she can drive home with you all on Wednesday.” He gave them a bright, general smile, and then turned back to where Robin and Mary’s husband had begun to debate the merits of Chelsea’s poor show the last year.

“Back with us?” Bran said, startled. “Is that a good idea?”

“Well she can’t stay here, can she?”

“She hasn’t done anything,” Jane said slowly. “Not really. I think… I think she needs help.”

“She needs locking up,” Bran said, startling them with his vehemence. “You could have _died_!”

“And you,” Will reminded him.

“Not really. She didn’t really poison the gin, it was only the spells.” Jane watched Beca as she stood there. “I think she needs help. And I don’t think she could really have killed anyone. That’s not what’s wrong.”

“Then what…?” Bran broke off. “Well she needs something, doesn’t she?”

“I can get her help,” Jane said. “If you help me get her down to Exeter, we can work through the shelter, and I can get her help.”

“But you work with women who’ve been abused, don’t you?” Will frowned. “How could you…” He faltered suddenly. “Oh.”

“He wasn’t a nice man, Caradog Pritchard,” Bran said slowly. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it.”

Jane nodded. “I think so. That would be my guess. One way or another. The shelter will take her in, and we can find her the right help.”

“We need to clean up here, then,” Bran said, looking around at Will’s happy family, who were still sending them the occasional worried look. 

Will nodded, and moved off to talk to them, one at a time, to offer them comforting half-truths, and more reassuring memories. He laid a hand on Bran’s shoulder as he passed, and gave Jane’s hand a quick squeeze. 

Jane looked at Beca, who was standing blankly beside them now, almost as if nothing had happened at all, and then she looked at Bran, and reached for his hand, and together they waited for Will to come back.

o0o

They sat together in Will’s cosy living room, fire flickering warmly across them, glasses of wine ready before them to toast in the new year. Will’s legs stretched across the coffee table towards Jane, and Bran lay beside him on the same sofa, stretched the other way, his pale hair brushing Will’s leg, gazing lazily into nothing.

“Well, it was a funny old Christmas,” he said. “There was me thinking I’d end up with socks from Da again, and dinner with the Evanses, and a quiet few days watching out for the sheep.”

“I was going to phone you,” Jane remembered. “I’d been thinking how long it was since we caught up last.”

“Are you feeling caught up now?” Will twinkled at her. “You might have been safer just phoning me as well.”

Jane smiled. “Then we wouldn’t have helped Beca. And I wouldn’t have seen the Lady again. Or the pair of you together.”

Bran groaned. “Give it a rest, Jenny-oh. How long before you’re bored of seeing us together?”

Jane’s smile widened. “You’ll have to come down to me next time. I’ve got a sofa bed. I bet you’ve not seen the underground city. You could come and be tourists.”

“That,” Will agreed, “might make a nice change. Hey - it’s nearly midnight.” He reached for his glass.

Bran swung around and sat up beside him, their legs brushing. He picked up his own drink, held it up as the carriage clock on the mantelpiece began its delicate chiming. “ _Blwyddyn Newydd Dda_ ,” he said. “And many more ahead.”

They clinked glasses together, Will and Jane trying to copy his toast with increasing hilarity, until they all collapsed back again in giggles, the ringing of the glasses echoing softly around them, chiming, like distant and musical bells.

o0o

* _I'll walk beside you through the passing years  
Through days of cloud and sunshine, joys and tears  
And when the great call comes, the sunset gleams  
I'll walk beside you to the land of dreams_.  
by Anon  
(from The Magpie Cat blog) 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide, Sultrybutdamaged - I hope this is at least a little bit the kind of thing that you were hoping for!


End file.
